


Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now )

by KaidaShade



Series: Endure [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Generally miserable fic really, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Predacons Rising, Substance Abuse, discussion of suicide, not a songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaidaShade/pseuds/KaidaShade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knock Out goes AWOL and Arcee has to track him down.</p><p>Inspired by the Phil Collins song of the same name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now )

“Um… excuse me, has anyone seen the doctor??” Arcee looked up from her terminal as a Vehicon poked their head in at the command centres door, managing to look nervous even without a proper face. She was almost grateful for the distraction from monitor duty, and devoted her full attention to them.  
“Knock Out? Isn't he in the medbay?” She asked, and the Vehicon shook their head. Her frown deepened when she noticed they seemed to be trying to conceal their body behind the wall.  
“No, uh… sir? At least, he wasn’t when I left ten minutes ago, and Roadkill said he’d been there for three hours and hadn’t seen him so… I thought I’d ask.”  
“He’s not been in here. Come on in, I’ll see if I can track him down.” She beckoned, turning to her computer and waiting until the Vehicon shuffled in. Their distress suddenly made sense when she realised that one of their arms was missing, tucked limply under the remaining one. “What happened?”  
“Oh… it’s not that bad. Just a construction accident, nobody’s gonna die or anything.” If this was what Vehicons considered minor, Arcee didn’t want to know what counted as severe.

A quick message to the rest of the Autobot command revealed that nobody had seen Knock Out that day, but then this wasn’t surprising. The medic seemed inclined to keep to himself in the medbay unless disturbed, and he was always diligent and polite when anything was required of him. Every time she’d swung by, whatever time of day or night, he’d always been there. She’d wondered if he ever powered down, in fact.

She glanced back at the Vehicon, who flinched. “Did you ask anyone else if they’d seen him?”  
“Asked a few of the guys, but nobody had seen him today.” They shook their head, worried. “Skidder and Bolt seemed to be the last ones, said they saw him yesterday.”  
“Think you can take me to them?” Something seemed off, and investigating seemed a better alternative than staring at a screen for hours. The Vehicon nodded and scuttled off, eager to please or perhaps just afraid.

The two bots they’d mentioned turned out to be in the ‘rec room’- an ancient storage room that the Vehicons had appropriated for their downtime, and Arcee couldn’t help glancing around nervously at the near-identical faces that surrounded her. She still wasn’t entirely used to the Vehicons being on their side, even though it had been nearly a month since the disbanding of the Decepticons. She still had no idea how they told each other apart, but her guide had no trouble doing so and had soon extracted their pair they wanted. They both shuffled nervously as though they expected her to punish them for some imagined transgression, and all but sagged in relief when she asked them about Knock Out.

“Yeah, we were on guard duty at the Energon store when we saw him-”  
“He just waltzed on up and grabbed one of the crates of high-grade that got processed the other day”  
“We would’ve stopped him, but… well, he outranks us”  
“Yeah and he can be really… cutting when he’s mad.”  
Arcee folded her arms and one of them flinched a little. “I mean, nobody said he /wasn’t/ allowed to take stuff, we just assumed he needed it for medical stuff!” They blurted.  
“Was he acting strangely or being suspicious?” She asked, hoping to soothe them. Both shook their heads.  
“No, he was just like normal, or-”  
“Normal for him these days anyway.”  
“These days?”  
“Yeah, he’s been really quiet ever since you guys beat that terrorcon horde-”  
“He’s not really been himself since- ow!” The other Vehicon sharply elbowed the speaker, who glared at him. At least, Arcee assumed he did.  
“Ever since what?” The Vehicons were taller than her, but quailed as she spoke. There was an awkward silence for a few moments, the surrounding bots clearly listening in, then one of them reset their vocalizer and mumbled;  
“Sorry, uh, sir, but we’re more afraid of him than we are of you, and he’ll rip my face off if I tell you.”  
Her eyes narrowed for a moment, but then she nodded. “I see. Okay, that’s all I need, thank you both.” They darted off, relieved, and the original Vehicon shuffled away. “You can go too, don’t worry. None of you are in trouble.”

She turned to head back to the monitor room, then diverted to the medbay. Several possibilities crossed her mind. First and foremost, that Knock Out had changed his mind and made a run for it, that he was a potential threat once again. It seemed obvious; taking supplies and disappearing without a word, what else would he be doing? But as she entered his space it didn’t strike her as true; there was none of the chaos of a hurried packing, nothing seemed to be missing, there was just the clutter of a busy workspace. And one Vehicon twiddling their thumbs awkwardly, one of their wings bent at the end. They eyed her as she circled the room, quiet and thoughtful. She didn’t know anything about Knock Out, she realised, and nothing in here told her enough to guess where he might have gone or why. There was nothing personal, but then there wouldn’t be. This was his workplace and he’d only inhabited it for a month or so. If she really wanted a hint, she’d have to go somewhere he’d been for longer.

She fired up her comm unit, shooting a message to Bumblebee as she gave the room one final sweep. “I’m going out to the Nemesis. If Knock Out’s not there, I might find a clue as to where he would be.”  
“You think he will be? Want backup?” His reply was filled with concern.  
“I think I can handle him.” She said, crouching as she spotted a familiar white staff propped in the corner, “He’s not even armed.”  
Bumblebee made a skeptical noise, but said “Okay, just… be careful.”

The drive out to the Nemesis was long and silent, only the wind in her audials and the roar of her engine keeping her company. The ship loomed on the horizon as she approached, black and ominous against the dull grey and brown backdrop. The only thing more impressive was the vast chasm of the Well beyond, the sight of which brought a pang of loss to her chest. She tried to avoid looking at it, not wanting to think too much about the last time she’d been here.

As she drew closer she started scanning for signs of life aboard the derelict hulk, almost disappointed when she saw nothing. But then, she hadn’t really expected him to linger here. Still, she started to grow worried when she found herself in the ship’s shadow and still there was no sign of anything on any of her scanners. She drew to a halt and transformed, continued on foot for a few paces, then paused. She could have sworn she heard… singing? But the sound had faded almost as soon as it had begun, and she carried on walking. A few dozen paces later, she heard it again, and this time when she stopped she thought she caught a few words she recognised. An old drinking song, she thought, one she’d heard Bulkhead and Wheeljack sing just a few nights before. Where their singing had been boisterous and loud, full of life and joy at just being alive and surrounded by friends, this voice was slower, faltering and staticky with misery.

She crept closer to the source of the noise, peering around a corner of the ship just as the singing tailed off into virtually inaudible muttering. There, by the edge of the Well, sat a hunched crimson figure with its back to her. Knock Out. She watched him for a moment, then stepped out and started towards him.

He was a mess, hunched over with long scratches and streaks of dirt marring his back, as though he’d driven hard over rough terrain to get here. He didn’t even seem to notice her, though she was making no effort to be quiet. It soon became clear why, the light of the afternoon sun catching on a stack of empty high-grade canisters to his side. That was enough to get a bot as big as Bulkhead utterly tanked, Primus knew what it’d do to one his size. It was only when she stopped a length or so behind him that he lifted his head, his movements jittery and uncoordinated, and jerked to look over his shoulder. His eyes burned unnaturally bright and she could hear the whirring of his fans even from that distance. She hadn’t realised just how close he was to the edge, but now she saw that his legs were actually dangling over the vast abyss. He seemed decidedly unconcerned, fixing her with an unsteady smile.

“Take a good look, Arcee. Have you ever seen anything quite so pathetic?” He said, his voice rough with static and his gaze somewhat unfocused. “If you’re here to push me in, go ahead, but if you’ve come to gawp then please. Just. Leave.” He shook his head and hunched back over, toying with the canister in his hands. Arcee didn’t think she’d ever heard someone so overcharged sound so tired. She circled around to his side and sat down next to him, a little further back from the edge.  
“That’s not why I’m here.” She told him quietly. He didn’t bother looking at her again, apparently mesmerised by the drop in front of him.  
“Then why?”

She considered the question, then shrugged. “You’re one of us now. I was worried about you.” Knock Out laughed, a bitter, humourless mockery of his usual gleeful cackle. “Worried about what I might be doing, you mean.”  
“No, that’s not what I mean. We-”  
“Don’t say you trust me, we both know that’s not true.”  
“We trust you about as much as you trust us.” She pointed out. He opened his mouth to respond, then shrugged, downed the rest of his energon and tossed the canister aside.  
“Touche, Arcee. But you Autobots are all about trust. I don’t trust anyone.” He reached for another canister, had to grope for it a couple of times with jittery fingers before he got hold of it. “Well, there was one bot. But he had to go and betray my trust and waltz off and get himself killed...” His voice fuzzed with static and he raised the canister to his mouth.  
“You mean Breakdown?” She blurted, then immediately regretted it when Knock Out flinched at the mention of the name. He lowered the canister, wrapped both of his hands around it and seemed fascinated by the swirling blue glow of the liquid within for a moment. The silence stretched.

“Yes. Breakdown.” He murmured, and Arcee’s spark ached for him. She didn’t know what to say. Of course, she knew what it was like to lose someone close to you, but she hadn’t expected to find such raw grief in a Decepticon, even a former one. After what seemed like an age, Knock Out let out a shaky sigh and his eyes flicked towards her. “He wasn't my friend.” he said, his claws tapping arrythmically against the side of the canister, “He was my conjux.”

“Oh.” Anything else she might have said died in her vocaliser under his scarlet gaze. Of all the things she might have expected, that was somewhere near the bottom. “I didn't know.”  
He snorted at the inadequate response. “Nobody did. You and I are the only living bots who do, now.” he said, turning to look out across the Well. “It was safer that way; nobody could use us against each other if they didn't know what we were.”  
“That… makes sense, I guess. But why tell me?” she wasn't exactly in his nonexistent circle of trust, after all.  
“What does it matter now? He's gone.” his face twisted into a snarl and he gulped down the energon in his hand, then threw the canister over his shoulder with enough force to make it bounce away across the ground. His hand came to rest on his chest, pressing down as though to dull an ache “He's gone, and he took most of my spark with him.”

Arcee expected him to fall silent again, but apparently the high grade had opened some emotional floodgate and he continued, “Being bonded is wonderful; you're never alone, not really, you feel like the centre of someone's universe. Now I just feel like the only living thing in the cosmos. Even that's dubious sometimes.” he chuckled, too high and too short, a little manic, “Have you ever felt someone die, Arcee? I wouldn't recommend the experience. And now I'll never get to have the life we promised ourselves once the war was over.”

She winced at the despair in his voice and had to resist the urge to reach out to him. She doubted he'd appreciate it. “He might come back. Reincarnate. People say the conjux bond can sometimes endure even across lifetimes.”  
She leaned back in surprise as his gaze snapped to her, longing etched into the lines of his face for a moment before he could guard himself. One of his eyes was brighter than the other; never a good sign. He shook his head. “No. It wouldn't be him. They might look like him, might take his name, might even find me familiar, but they would be a different bot entirely.” he sighed, “I know I'm a Decepticon and therefore a monster, but even I'm not sick enough to seduce some guileless sparkling into a twisted facsimile of my relationship with Breakdown.”  
“You're not-” she started, but he spoke over her, not really listening,  
“No. I am. I would be tempted. If he comes back, I intend to stay well away from him. Perhaps it would be better if I was not around at all…”

Arcee felt her spark clench as he leaned forwards, his hands resting on the rim of the well and taking some of his weight. She moved faster than she thought, and it was only when he looked in surprise at her hand on his wrist that she realised she'd grabbed him.

Neither of them moved, the tension dragging out the seconds and holding them suspended. After what felt like an eternity his eyes slid up her arm to her face, searching and suspicious. Whatever she said next, she thought, might seal both their fates.  
“What if that's not true, though?” she said, locking eyes with him as if she could hold him there by will alone. He was bigger, he could drag her down with him if he wanted to. “There's stories about bots who've come back as themselves, remembered everything.”  
His eyes widened a moment, a flicker of hope unguarded just for a moment, then he dismissed the idea.  
“Just stories. It'd be a billion to one chance.”  
“Maybe. But what if he does, and you're not there?”  
“It's against all odds, Arcee.” he said, but she felt him relax slightly under her hand.  
“It's a chance you gotta take though, right?” she persisted, leaning in a little.

He didn't move, didn't say anything, but eventually he sat back down and lifted his hands in surrender. She let go, his feverish, overcharged warmth clinging to her fingers. “That was very stupid,” he told her. “but brave, I suppose. Why?”  
“Because you're one of us now. I'm not gonna let you just throw everything away.”

"Really now? Alright. You've won, I'll wait and see what happens.” he said, resigned rather than truly hopeful as he lifted his face to the sky contemplatively. It was a start. “We always managed against the odds anyway.”

Carefully, Arcee got up and offered him her hand. “Come on. You need to power down and sober up for a while. Think you can drive?” Knock Out eyed her for a moment before taking her hand and getting unsteadily to his feet.  
“Wheels would be easier than walking.” he said once he managed to remain upright for a few seconds. “Just… give me a moment. Ill catch you up.”  
He turned to give a final look out across the Well, and Arcee started walking. It was mere seconds before the crimson supercar shot past her, shouting at her to keep up, but in those moments she thought she heard him whisper “I'm waiting. Come back to me.”


End file.
